ffxiv Archives - Page 90 of 92 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Pre-Endgame Game

October 29, 2013 by Belghast

Limited Time Stuff

First off I guess let me open todays post with a complaint. I really had nothing much to talk about as I sat down at the keyboard, so I did what I normally do and sifted through my RSS feed. I spent most of yesterday super busy and really did not have time to read anything much. One of the first posts was over on Rift Junkies talking about how apparently there was a new mount available for only four hours on the Rift store. They are apparently calling this unstable artifacts, which is a clever excuse to make something super limited that costs a hell of a lot on the store.

I am not against the 2700 credit price tag, but I am against the concept of limited time items. I hate when something goes into game only to be pulled out swiftly keeping anyone else from getting the item. I honestly don’t care about the red Kirin at all, because I think the mounts are ugly, but for me it is more a principle of it. When a game starts doing one time only things, I really lose interest quickly. I get extremely frustrated anymore when I am asked to play a game on someone else’s schedule. With the recent rapidly expiring world event each phase lasting only two days… this seems to be the direction that Rift wants to move in.

The more of this type of content goes into the game the less and less interested I am in it. There are so many things about Guild Wars 2 that I think I would enjoy, but the fact that content expires roughly every two weeks keeps me from wanting to dig in and try it. I don’t want to ONLY play this one game, and in order to farm up every new thing in the world… I would really have to do just that. The whole playing the same game every single night concept just seems foreign to me. There are so many different games I want to experience, so knowing I will go into a game missing out on things… makes me think my time is better spent elsewhere.

Pre-Endgame Game

I guess while I am complaining, I might as well not stop with Rift. Onwards to FInal Fantasy A Realm Reborn! We absolutely lucked out as a guild and had eight of us reaching 50 within a few days of each other. Well that is not true I guess, we had one super impatient gamer rush through to the end game and sit there without any additional support for about two weeks. However the majority of us arrived at the end game at roughly the same time. This made the sequence of three eight man instances seem not that horrible in part because it was fresh content for all of us. However now that we have another three characters up to 50, I am realizing what a slog it really is.

So much of the end of the main storyline in FFXIV reminds me of the trials and tribulations of having to key players for various raid instances in both EQ and WoW. Be warned there will be some spoilers, so if you care about that sort of thing, I would stop reading. I will try my best to do as few as possible, but it is going to happen. Essentially when you hit 49 you start down a sequence of events that leads to the finishing of the main storyline. The first of these is Cape Westwind, yet another trial. We have done this now three times… and quite honestly I cannot tell you exactly how the mechanics work. The biggest pain is getting eight players online at the same time.

Next you run through a few quests and end up unlocking Castrum Meridianum… which is surprise surprise another eight man dungeon. This takes a little over an hours time normally if you are not doing the speed run chicanery… and now that every mob in the instance drops decent money there really is no reason why you would. These places are decent money. Once you finish up in there, you do a few more quests and wind up stalled on The Praetorium… yet another 8 man dungeon. This one takes quite a bit longer than the previous one and is a wee bit trickier at times. Finally after finishing this sequence of events you can finish the main storyline and unlock Amdapor Keep.

We have been working our way through these for Cyl, Opo and Tivo… and the problem with an eight man dungeon is trying to accommodate eight different play schedules. We really only seem to have time to do one of the dungeons in the sequence per night. Last night we were trying to figure out when we could pull together a group next… and the problem is we are unlikely to be able to get ALL of the necessary players online until next week sometime. As we started going through the days, there was one player that could not attend on each of the nights. While the final storyline is extremely cool… it just seems like a lot of bullshit to have to slog through to even begin the end game grind.

Norrath Calling

Towards the end of the night I ended up logging out of FFXIV and popping into EQ2 for a bit. I have said it before, and I will say it again… sooner or later I always return to playing EQ2. I am not sure if I am ready to be back in it yet, but I did some questing out in Withered Lands and enjoyed the relaxed pace. My friend that recently returned was telling me excitedly about the guilds plans to start doing heroics, and while I think that is cool I don’t want anyone to factor me in their gaming decisions yet. I already have a game where I am a key resource for running instances… I really don’t want another one.

That is not to say that I don’t enjoy tanking dungeons, because I do… otherwise I wouldn’t keep returning to playing that role. I just find that tanking takes more out of me than it used to. I cannot chain run instances like I once could. So I find myself needing something else to play so I can have a bit of peace and quiet… and more importantly downtime. Everquest 2 has always been a good filler of this niche. I would like to get my Shadowknight up to 95 so I can be prepared for the new content when it releases as well. I still feel like in many ways I am running from WoW, because I know that will only end up in tears of frustration. I continue to ignore its sirens call by playing other things… just not sure how long that will work.

WoW Remix

October 23, 2013 by Belghast

Gamer Nature

One of the things I have learned while playing Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn… is that any player from 11 or 14 classic… really hates it when a player compares the game to World of Warcraft. I’ve seen so many of these “classic” players fill with so much rage the first time someone mentions WoW. Yesterday I encountered a small bit of it outside of the game in a G+ thread where myself and another tank were giving an up and coming Gladiator some advice on how best to deal with multi-mob threat.

Best advise I have to you is: don’t expect this game to have "WoW equivalents." This isn’t WoW. It’s not a WoW clone. It’s not trying to be WoW. You’ll enjoy the game a lot more if you take it as it is, rather than forcing it to fit some molded preconception you have for it. You’re trying to fit a circle peg into a square hole.

WoW Remix

So I found the above comment rather puzzling. Especially coming from where this game did… the new version while not a “WoW Clone” is at the very least a WoW Remix. Almost every ability I have has some simulacrum in World of Warcraft. For example I think of my Warrior as a mix between a Druid tank and a Deathknight tank. While it is in fact a unique beast… I still refer to the process of tabbing through mobs and applying Butchers Block as “Tab Sunder”. Everything ultimately gets referred to more often than not by the wow name for it. I don’t teleport back to my home location… I hearth.

Since most of the active MMO gamer pool has a relatively short memory… this is the way it has always been. Before WoW claimed the crown as the most popular MMO… each new release got referred to by the terms we used in Everquest. Damaging yourself to get back mana… was referred to as “Twitching” or “Cading” in reference to the Necromancer or Shaman spells. Any form of a speed boost was often referred to as “SoW”, I can remember hearing people call the various speed powers “SoW” in City of Heroes. To some extent listening to the FFXI diehards talk in FFXIV ARR has been a trip down memory lane… because those players carried with them terms from EQ into XI like DD for direct damage.

Top Dog Sets Rules

Awhile back there was a thread somewhere asking what games you would suggest to new players… and quite honestly despite my sordid relationship with the game, I have to say I would always suggest that someone play at least SOME World of Warcraft. In my own guild we have a few players who have never played the game, and as a result they miss the references that are made in guild chat and mumble all of the time. Thing is… this is not just a thing my guild does, this is a thing EVERY guild does in EVERY new game. World of Warcraft had its own vocabulary that was grown out of the lingo that we used in Everquest. Essentially as that game eclipsed the other games, its ability names started to take the place of the previous ones that were used.

Today going into any MMO for the first year at least… every single thing in game is going to be referred to by its WoW equivalent. So the fact that as a seasoned MMO player… I can find immediate and direct WoW equivalents makes me think that the above statement is a little naïve. FFXIV very much has wow equivalents, just like every game since the rise of wow has… and every game after will as well. It is the fact that a game becomes the market leader that determines who dictates the vocabulary, because essentially there is nothing new under the sun. Everything we do in FFXIV also has a direct EQ vocabulary equivalent, as everything we see today is a remix of the things that came before it. The comparisons will someday shift again, but only when a game has eclipsed the current leader.

Final Funk

October 22, 2013 by Belghast

Pull Resisted

Last night I resisted the desire to re-up my World of Warcraft account… in part because I really did not feel like playing much of anything. When I first logged in I popped into Hearthstone to see what the daily quest happened to be. It was win two matches with a paladin or priest deck, neither of which I have even finished unlocking the basic cards for. I made a valiant attempt at victory on a paladin, only to find out that practice victories did not count. Essentially there is no way in hell right now that I could beat an actual player with either of those decks… even though priest seems to be pretty damned hax based on my regular loss record against them.

After that I popped into Rift for a few but could not seem to find the oomph to play that either. Though since the shiny vault was backed up again, I figured I would at least take the time to pilfer through that and help relieve some of the stress. I have been in these unknown funks before, but I am not sure what to do to kick myself out of this one. Ultimately I ended up retiring to bed and playing Pokémon Y until my wife joined me some time later.

Final Funk

I think in part my present funk is due to the fact that once again I have topped out another game and lack the drive to do much of anything further in it. I am still very much enjoying the dungeons when we can pull those together, and I want to do more 8 man content especially now that we have a fresh 50 to run through it. However I don’t have a single thing I really care to do in game the rest of the time. So as a result I am simply not logging in. I did the All Saints’ Wake and it was extremely disappointing and finished within like 10 minutes time or running errands throughout the various cities.

One of my game designers always brings up the “moment to moment” play, and I guess for me this is what is lacking in Final Fantasy. After pushing my Warrior to 50 and then grinding up a Bard to 50 as well doing literally nothing but FATES… I find myself lacking the desire to do the FATE grind ever again. Normally tradeskills is a thing that fills in the gaps, providing me some downtime between grinds. However you can tell a tradeskill system is bad if I would far rather play the EQ2 mini-game crafting system than do anything within the FFXIV system.

Another huge thing that tarnishes my enjoyment of FFXIV is that like it or not… I am a bit of a loot whore. At the very least much of my homicidal rage against monsters… is because I know they have a chance, albeit slim of dropping something amazing. I like playing the loot pinata, and when a game has that sort of a loot system I can happily grind again at mobs never quite knowing what the next one will drop. FFXIV on the other hand has absolutely no meaningful loot. Mobs drop crafting items, and since I don’t really care about crafting… there is absolutely zero excitement there.

So as I stand currently I am not playing the game much at all. My friends have access to me via instant message, twitter, text message… so I figure if they need me to tank for them I am more accessible than most folks. In the meantime I keep trying to figure out something that excites me to do in the time between dungeon runs. My other friends seem to default to League of Legends, but quite frankly I don’t enjoy the game enough to ever queue with strangers. So as a result I end up trying to resist the desire to re-up wow and playing quite a lot of Pokémon.

Halloween 2013

October 19, 2013 by Belghast

Spooky Pasta!

One of the things I love in the various MMOs I play or have played… are the varried Holiday events. Some of them make an extreme effort to fit them into the lore of their world, and others just cut and paste a real world tradition onto their land. Both have their merits and both are enjoyable so long as they don’t involve too much grinding. Each game seems to pick and choose holidays, but there are two that every game seems to have… Christmas and of course Halloween.

Halloween time is generally my favorite holiday because the traditions itself usually involve killing lots of dark denizens of the night. Additionally the playing dress up theme usually means some cool weapon and armor skins that you can use throughout the rest of the year. Currently we are in the run up to Halloween itself, and as a result pretty much every MMO has some form of event going on marking the holiday. Going to take a few minutes this morning to talk about some of the cooler ones.

Nights of the Dead

This event runs in Everquest 2 from 10/15 through 11/11 and is probably the grand daddy of all Halloween events. Each year they keep adding new content, but still leaving all of the old content in place. Zam has a really great guide to the various quests and events. If you are one of the new to EQ2 folks who just partook of the free level 85 event… I highly suggest checking it out. However even with a brand new account you can still participate in most of the fun. My personal favorite event is the hedge maze that drops lots of nifty cosmetic gear.

Blood and Madness

Guild Wars 2 supposedly has a really amazing event called Blood and Madness that kicked off on October 15th that involved a series of limited time events (one day only) finally culminating in a big event that only exists Halloween night. Dulfy has a pretty comprehensive guild to the events, but for the most part if you are not already doing this series you have missed out this year. This has been my key bitch about Guild Wars 2 to date… I hate the concept of short run limited time events. The amount of busy work needed really only allows someone who ONLY plays GW2 to keep up… and because of this I just can’t be bothered to attempt it. I would love to see this as a long term event that ran the entire length of the holiday, but until then it will be out of my reach.

Autumn Harvest

Rift has an event called Autumn Harvest that starts on October 17th and runs through Halloween and potentially a little bit past. They have chosen to focus on the harvest aspect of the holiday and as such have sent you to a special version of the Realm of the Fae where you help Atrophinius and his minions bring in the amber sap harvest. There are a ton of cool things you can get, including a phantom version of several popular mounts. The coolest feature of the event however is that you can get these short time use potions that make tons of artifacts show up on the ground in the realm of the fae. This is a huge catch up on collections event. This year around there are a ton of new items to be gotten and you can check out this preview guide on Rift Junkies.

Hallow’s End

Hallow’s End is an event that occurs in World of Warcraft from October 18th through November 1st. There are tons of nifty things going on like trick or treating, but the meat and potatoes of the event is the Scarlet Monastery Headless Horseman instance. I have a love/hate relationship with this holiday. Every year it has been available (and that I have been playing wow) I have participated in the event… all for a shot at the extremely awesome flying headless horseman mount. Every single year I have come up empty handed. When a game company places an item in an event, like a mount… that is usable every day… and makes it a super rare random drop… I want to stab them.

All Saints’ Wake

Currently there is an event going on over in FFXIV that is completely new to me. All Saints’ Wake started a little early, but was intended to run from October 18th through November 1st. All of the time zones get a little discombobulated in the translation. While I am not partaken in the event yet, so far the other one I have seen has been what I would call “Holiday-Lite” in that there is a FATE going on that awards some sort of currency that you then use to purchase things off a vendor. Since the vanity gear system is not in place yet, this makes the things you can acquire super limited, but I plan on gathering them up just in case. One of the most humorous observations from last night is that apparently the Pumpkin helms… are repaired by Cullinarians.

The Rundown

That is the rundown of the big ones I know of that are going on, but like I said in the first part of the post… this is the one holiday that pretty much EVERY MMO celebrates. I can even remember in Hellgate: London there being a Halloween event of sorts that took its form in a Guy Fawkes day celebration… that happened to have a lot of Halloween themed stuff. I would be curious to hear about any events that are your favorite that I missed.